Board & Table games 2 for many civilizations
By R.C Bell
. Book chosen to look at how different cultures have adapted their own versions of popular games today. Also to understand the mechanics of older board games and how they can relate to more present ones.
- Historic values to look out how board games have developed over the last century.
One thing I noticed through scanning this book is that the older board games before the 19th century were all made out of very extravagant materials, far more so than games of our present era. The Far Eastern regions, Egypt, and Africa used materials such as, Ivory, Bone, Shell, Gold, Walnuts and Lacquered finishing to produce board games. Even Europe used materials such as China, mother of pearl, Deer’s antlers and marble. All continents used materials pretty specific to their homeland, which is clearly understood due to trading posts or them at the time were rare, or unknown.
From this use of complex and expensive materials, I can determine that board games had much greater importance back in history. It would take time to make the games with the lack of useful facilities, so a lot of effort was put into the construction to make them more worth their while. It makes a great deal of sense, as surely in the older time periods, sources of that kind of entertainment were rare. It mainly consisted of reading, listening to music or playing sport. The development of the board game gave a new source of interactivity that appealed to many people, family and friends that could all get together and socially in the comfort of their own home. It would appear, that only wealthier people would’ve been able to afford the board games, due to the expense of the materials used. This already indicates to me where the term of a ‘Target Audience’ began, not necessarily for age, but for social status.
Within this book I found a very popular board game that is still well known today. The term of Chess has expanded greatly across many countries where it has been adapted, and altered to that particular culture. As far as materials go, I believe that both the Chessboard and pieces have been made out of every kind! Even up to our present time with all the kinds of plastics, wood and glass. I found three different alterations of chess, with similar features but all presenting unique designs.
- The Burmese chessboard of teak, and pieces of pinkadoe. Modern, but still shows signs of traditional forms. Opening positions advised by Bastian, and Shway Yoe.
- Siamese chessboard and pieces. Also modern looking, but has kept the traditional layout of figures have stayed the same.
- A reproduction of a Japanese chessboard and pieces, arranged for the start of the game quite differently to what we are familiar with. This is also known as ‘Shogi’.
From analyzing this, it fascinated me how even slight cultural differences can greatly affected the same genre of game. How specific iconic characters, religions and languages from that country can change both the rules and make up of the gaming style, whilst keeping the ACTUAL genre identical. With all the new types of starting positions and rules, the concept of Chess stayed the same by using certain symbolic pieces and board designs (checked) it also hosted the tradition of genre, as a patient and compelling, turn based game.
Aside from Chess I also noticed other games in the book, and how they looked like earlier versions of ones in our present era. Tangram in particular caught my eye, for the fact of using random shapes to make silhouettes of existing figures/animals/items etc. It reminded my of a game called Pictionary that we often use in present day, for it’s fun in making up images out of questions. However, I understand the rules of Tangram are different, but the idea of composing imaginative pictures was identical, and gave me a better insight to the creativity of both then and now. The concept of that style of board game, gives more freedom to the players to use their own ideas and make the game turn out in a direction more relatable to themselves. I think it’s an important mechanism to make the player feel 100% immersed within the game, so that the amusement and entertainment factor can have solid stability for years to come. Games like Monopoly, Chess, Pictionary, and Scrabble all take similar approaches by producing different styles of one game, so that the customer audience can appeal to such a broader spectrum of players.
Tangram – Chinese shape making, reminds me slightly of Japanese Origami, and how shapes are folded instead of aligned to make shapes or silhouettes of figures.
In comparison to our current era, board games have seemed to lose a great deal of importance in our futuristic world. Now with technology moving forward, and developing digital gaming, the board game franchise has been tossed aside. Also with the input of Television, CDs, DVDS and cinema there seems to be less and less reason to play them. Without sounding to bias in that statement, board games are still used and admired for many people across all countries, and taking the most popular style of game and either changing portrays this in it’s design or style, or even making it entirely digitally based for continuous entertainment use. For example games like, Chess, Scrabble, Monopoly and Mah-jong have many types of versions, and also been enhanced into the digitally interactive world, more specifically for the PC and consoles known as the Nintendo Wii, or DS. In doing this particular development, older games in the board game genre can live a bit longer and survive in our expanding world, without being so left behind with materialistic based game play.
This book was divided into 9 main genres of board game during the 18th-19th century. These are:
- Race – element of speed or time
- War – Chess based, positional based on actual militia attire
- Positional – Like checkers, chess, Ma-Jong.
- Mancala – similar to Chess in the West/Arabic for ‘to move’/played in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Originally made in Africa.
- Dice – Luck/Chance
- Domino – Numeric
- Words and Numbers – Spelling/Grammar/Numeric/Anagrams
- Card games requiring boards
- Manual Dexterity – often requires players to create a lot of the board game, whether it’s the actual board or if the game requires you to be moving in a certain way.
I was really taken by one bit of information that I found on the chapter ‘War Games’ Apparently, board games had great importance during many War’s as it acted as a catalyst for decision making and progression. I quote “ The Queen and her advisers placed more faith and victory on the result of an official game between designated professionals than they did on their army.” From this small amount of data, I can already indicated the severity of board games in older eras, and how they do not compare to present day examples. That actual military manoeuvres were derived from the victor of playing a strategic based board game: It sounds terribly foolish today, but only with what examples I am exposed to, not from how games were made or treated in earlier centuries.
Overall from this book I have learnt how board games during the 18th-19th century had far much more severe importance, than to what we have in our present day. The majority were constructed from the finest materials, and were aimed for the richer and more socially high in status. Although the poor did have games in their discretion, but nothing in comparison to what was actually available for the wealthier. I also learned how we have obtained many inspirations from our board gaming past, and how we have adapted original concepts into modernized styles.
Bibliography
. R.C Bell Board and Table games2 for many civilizations:
- Page 75, 67-69, 60, 44, 45, 24 for image and certain text referencing (quotes)
. Google images:
- Pictionary
- Chess
- Tangram
- Shogi
No comments:
Post a Comment